The embodiments described in the disclosure relate to the field of activity or location-based tracking and specifically, to automatically detecting the start of a walk event of a wearable tracking device.
Human users are increasingly using wearable devices to utilize numerous computing functions provided by a conveniently sized device. Frequently, wearable devices are utilized to measure and track human activity to maintain a healthy lifestyle and monitor progress towards specific fitness goals.
Recently, wearable devices have been created to monitor and analyze the movement and activity of non-human wearers, such as household pets. Wearable devices placed on household pets also allow for the monitoring of movement and activity and allow for the tracking of household pets while owners are not present.
Frequently however, household pets exhibit a significant amount of inertia and lack the ability to manually (and intentionally) control a wearable device. Thus, current wearable devices designed for animals require constant GPS monitoring to track the location and activity of the animals despite the relative level of inactivity of the animal. Such constant monitoring is required as the wearable device has no way to intelligently determine when GPS tracking is required and when it is not required.
Constant use of GPS receivers significantly impacts the battery life of a wearable device and thus require the device to be recharged frequently, often every day or multiple times per day. Moreover, constant GPS polling (and transmittal to a server) requires significant bandwidth expenditures that, depending on the network use, may be both costly and impractical. Further, given the relatively long periods of inactivity, the collection of GPS data at all times for animals is unnecessary. Instead, GPS data is only needed during relatively brief periods of an animal's day.
Thus, there exists a need in the art for a system, device, and method for intelligently monitoring the location of a wearable device and determining when elevated GPS monitoring is required based on the activity of the wearable device.